Still Passing Open Windows ....

Back

We're back home after being away for five weeks. When we landed, for the first time in years I felt glad to be back. Glad to see the dense green of the trees with their summer growth and even glad to see colleagues and be back at work. Europe seems to have regained some of its magic for me, I see why I love it again and don't think, "What on earth am I doing here?"

I had a dentist's appointment this morning before work and my path to work led through a market. It is a beautiful market. I must try and take a photo one day so you can see it. There are different types of lettuce laid out in boxes and rows and rows of raspberries and strawberries and gnarled bread and the people serving you have thick fingers with dark soil under their finger nails as if they had picked the vegetables that morning. They were selling edible flowers for salads, little purple blossoms and nasturtium-looking flowers, and if I had had more money I would bought some just because they were pretty.

"When do you go back?" asked a friend, referring to the next IVF cycle.

"Sometime in July or August," I said.

"Have you contacted your RE?" asked H.

"No," I said and just leaned back against the pillar behind me, waiting for the conversation to move along. 

I think the cancellation of the last IVF hit me harder than I realise. I don't want to talk about any of this any more. I don't want to think about it even. I don't even know if I want to do it. "What will bring you joy?" is the question I should be asking to decide the right direction for me, I read today. "So, what will bring me joy?" I thought, "A baby," I replied. "Even a baby with donor eggs?" I just don't know. Part of me thinks that I need to keep my eye on what I want and accept what it takes to get there while part of me is a little girl who stamps her foot and says, "I want it to be mine, all mine!" I feel as if I am becoming more and more superfluous. I won't carry this baby and now it looks as if this baby won't carry a part of me and that is hard. What makes me hesitate is that I don't even feel excited about the idea of a donor egg surrogate pregnancy. I just feel all 'yeah, whatever,' as if I am being given the last prize in the box and being told, "But look how much fun this egg cup is, look how much you can do with it! Look, you can fill it with water and empty it out, and you can ... erm, well, there will be so many fun things to do with it." And it's just not fair to feel this unexcited about a child who is going to be born.

Trying to enjoy life

Thank you to everyone who has commented. I am very touched as always and every time I read a comment I feel more guilty for my absence. I am lying on the couch and slouching around the streets bemoaning my lot and muttering, "Why me?" as I walk past yet another pregnant woman or twin stroller.

My uncle has this theory that you see what you are looking out for. I decided to test this theory and look for fairies. Probability of failure guaranteed I decided. During the day I saw 756 pregnant women or little babies and then all of a sudden, what do you know, I saw a little fairy doll dropped near a railing. I'm still looking out for fairies but the pregnant women keep blocking my view (if you read this, Becky, you're excluded, you can block my view any time!)

So, today I am trying to find 5 things that are going well in my life because honestly things are not that bad, I just keep seeing the pregnant woman in the corner and dammit, this cannot go on. Surely at some point it will end?

1. I am down a pants size at Banana Republic. Yes!!!!
2. It is not raining (listen, I'm trying to be positive)
3. H and I are not fighting (scraping the barrel here but 5 good things? Today that seems like a lot)\
4. I have 2 new cute tops to wear
5. There is nothing I am dreading this week (so far)

I mean, come on, I can enjoy life even though I have been trying for five years to have a child, even though I have lost two babies, even though the doctors are so un-positive about my chances of having a baby at all. I mean there are still things to enjoy. Aren't there? I just have to figure out how. My capacity for enjoyment seems to have shrivelled up completely.

Bored, bored and probably boring to know

I am bored. Bored stiff. Nothing to read. Nothing to watch on TV. Nothing to do and now I have reached that advanced stage of boredom where there is nothing I even want to do. I am starting to think of taking a sleeping pill and going to bed and it is only 5.13 p.m. Maybe two sleeping pills?

No news from our plan C people. At my 6 week post-partum check up the gynaecologist said that he had two patients with a similar history to mine who had gone on to have a third pregnancy with no problems. At my post-partum visit with my RE he said the likelihood of pre-term birth happening again was high. So ... We have 3 options; try again, adopt or try surrogacy. No, actually we have 4 options; try again, adopt, surrogacy or give up the idea of having children. For now we are thinking seriously of surrogacy but it is slow, as all infertility plans seem to be. 99.5% of the time is spent waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And to go by past experience, more waiting followed by crashing defeat. So often it feels like option 4 is what will eventually happen.

I just feel old. I feel like I have no more energy to have children, that I am too old to play with children or do stuff with them, that I would just be a crap mom now.

What do you do when you get so bored you can barely crawl off the couch? 

On certain days I have some form of peace about the whole reproduction thing. On certain days I am relieved not to be monitoring my cycle, not to be planning acupuncturist's appointments, not to be trying to avoid coffee or eat raw food or take spirulina or whatever that month's magic pill was supposed to be. There is even a part of me that feels lighter and that skips from time to time with joy at the thought of being able to release everything that trying to fall pregnant and trying to stay pregnant involves in my life, of just being able to let go and live without worrying or thinking 700 times about everything I do.

Then this month my period was a little late. A very little late. My cycles are usually 24 days, this month it stretched to 27 days. Despite myself, despite everything that has happened and the probable end of another pregnancy, I felt that happiness that being newly pregnant after wanting it for so long brings. The world looked like a beautiful place. I felt special, happy with my secret. I even entertained thoughts of how I would have to cancel next week's trip, not go away for Easter either and how I wouldn't tell anyone, not even my doctor until 3 months. I felt that if this pregnancy had arrived miraculously without any intervention on my part that it would run a smooth course, even though Meg has walked that road and found it not to be the case. So not the case.

And now I think AF has arrived. It's good, I tell myself. I can carry out my fitness programme (ha ha ha) and continue trying to lose weight instead of spending 5 months wondering will it/won't it work this time. I can go to Paris and drink like a fish with an old university friend without worrying if the trip has damaged some fragile blood vessel which will bring the whole bang shoot to an end. I can go away for Easter and enjoy it with H and not sit at home trying to will the pregnancy to a successful end. Yes, this is much better.

But a part of me would still like to be pregnant. I was reading my journal from December when I wrote that sometimes it felt my grip on life was so tenuous, I felt it would almost be easier to drift away and that feeling of being on the edge of the void terrified me. I think surviving another loss would be horrendous, would possibly dip me into the void which I teeter on at times. And yet still some part of me would be so happy to be pregnant. It has to be something in my genes because all logic goes against it. It is possibly a bloody good thing that I don't fall pregnant naturally.

Missing

I miss being pregnant. I cannot help thinking that I should be around 7 months now. I know it doesn't help, I know I should avoid these thoughts but it keeps on coming back: I should still be pregnant. I miss the feeling of being special that I had when I was pregnant. I miss knowing that there was a child growing inside. I miss that feeling of hope. I miss thinking that I could just be a normal person with a child. I miss that.

Of course there was all the anxiety and fear that something could go wrong, but there was also so much hope.

We are working on other plans to have children but unless I am actively speaking to an agency, I feel that this is the end, that I will never have children, that I will always endure women's conversation as they discuss schools and childfriendly holidays, that I will always be the outsider. I feel that this is my life and one of the scary effects of this is that I pull away from H. This just feels like my pain and my issue. He could have children. He could move on and recover while I seem to be stuck. He seems to be doing ok. His job is going well and he is involved in exciting stuff. I am just in the swamps of self pity and despair and negativity. This just seems to be pulling us apart and I feel our connection growing weaker and weaker and weaker.

I am hoping this is just Valentine's Day fall out. All those happy, brightly coloured couples gazing into each other's eyes, reinforcing my view of stereotyped relationships where you get married and buy a house and have 2.3 children as the only way to live happily ever after.

How do you draw closer in bad times? How do you live happily ever after when your story is not the traditional one you grew up believing in?

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone, I hope it is a happy one.

I said to H I didn't want to celebrate it but today I feel strange not marking the day. I know, I know, I'm a marketing victim. It's a difficult day to celebrate. How do I celebrate it without looking at where we are and where we have come from? How do I sit down with H and not remember our years together and everything we have gone through which I never ever expected to experience and which have devastated us? How do I not remember our children who are not here?

Here's to a year when I can celebrate anniversaries without feeling sad, when I can just be happy that we are where are and not think of what might have been. Here's to a year when we can all celebrate that. (I'm half a bottle of wine down, can you tell?)

I wish you all an easy day, a good day with chocolate and red wine and love.

Holiday

We spent a week in Cape Town and got back yesterday. It was good to be somewhere I loved and somewhere I have happy memories. I would like to be able to live there, in a Brigadoon-type existence. This week's plan is to move to the Russian steppes and photograph yaks. Enough of this trying to be wife and mother, it just does not seem to be for me and the steppes have an attractive emptiness which calls to me. I, of course, envisage publishing an enormously popular book of magnificent photos and becoming famous as the Yak Lady. The book will naturally be followed by a set of interesting commissions which will take me all over the world, photographing areas of natural beauty and the picturesque decay of colonial buildings.

 

and I had to include one of my favourites: a food photo, of which I have many. If I don't become the Yak Lady, I am contemplating becoming the Chili Squid Salad Lady.

Cynical Thought for Today

When people say, "I don't know how you can deal with this," I just answer, "You have no choice. Life goes on." I wake up and I have to go to the bathroom and then I shower and speak to H and go to work and get hungry and eat something and drive home and watch TV. Life doesn't just stop because you're sad.

So my cynical thought for today is 'Of course I will make it through. What's going to happen? It's highly unlikely that a car will fall on my head.' I'll still be here tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

And what is your cynical thought for the day?

Finding some meaning

I don't have much to say, there isn't really much happening but I have to write an update as it has been ages since I last wrote anything. To continue with the theme of there isn't really much happening, I went back to work last week and it went fine. Better than I expected. So now I am back at work.

Yup.

And that is all there is to say unfortunately about work. You see, my job is not this super fulfilling one that gives my life meaning. I don't spend a day at work and forget about all the other crap because I am doing something that absorbs me and that I do well. My job is just a job. It pays me enough to do what I want to do on the weekends and it has a great medical insurance but it's nothing more. I am not learning more or developing skills I want to develop. I wonder if I had a job I loved, if I had a job that made me leap out of bed in the mornings and not notice time going by when I was there, if this infertility thing would be easier to deal with.

Those of you who have jobs you love, does it help? Do you feel less empty and useless when you are at work?

Why don't you ....

I spoke to a friend last night. She has been trying to phone me. I have been trying to avoid her. I started trying to fall pregnant 6 months before she did and told her. She said they weren't ready. Nine months later she phoned to say she was pregnant. She now has two children, her second born a few days after my son's due date.

She and I have often been in the same place at the same time; we have similar interests and often we will call to find that we are both into raw food or reading the same book or questioning similar issues. She tries very hard to understand and not to impose her childful life on me when she calls, hence probably the talk about books and diets. However, as I was saying to H, if you haven't lived it you have no way of understanding it. "What about adoption?" she asked hesitantly and when I spoke of my worries about attachment and bonding, she said, "You mustn't think too much about those things." The problem is I do, and actually I must. I have to consider all the implications and consequences, as far as it's possible for my attention-deficit little mind which loves to skim-read a few sites and make a flash decision. And, the big AND, for someone who has children easily and when and how they want to a large extent, adoption is simply a solution. They have no idea of the tears and energy and pain and questioning that have gone before. I think that to a large number of fertiles adoption, or IUI or IVF or surrogacy or whatever one decides to do, is THE SOLUTION. The possibility of failure, the cost of getting to this point, the cost involved in carrying on is like the hidden part of the iceberg. "Ok now everything is solved, let's go and have coffee. And just think, this time next year you'll be here with your baby," I can almost hear my friends saying.

I know I am being unfair. I know people mean well. I know they want to help but suggestions from the fertile community always upset me. At the moment the only people I am listening to are the infertile bloggers because they get it, they know the costs involved, in getting to this point and in carrying on. Thank you to all of you who have commented or emailed, it has helped me so much in feeling part of a group of women and not like the weirdo outsider.